Archive of Our Own

1. on getting lost

They meet in the usual way, as first-years in homeroom. On his first day at a new school in a new grade in a new prefecture, Futakuchi miraculously sees a distinctive head of white hair and immediately drops into the next seat over.

"Aone," he says. The boy looks up warily. He doesn't seem to recognize Futakuchi, which is fair: Futakuchi only really knows how he looks. He hangs his bag on the hook beside his desk. "You were in 3-3, right?"

Aone's face clears in comprehension, then twists again. "Yes."

"I was in 3-4." Not that their classrooms at that school still exist. I know, he tries to project. I get it. "Let's be friends."

Aone nods. Futakuchi might be imagining it, but the slope of his shoulders is a little less stiff.

It's a pretty mundane first day, as they always are if you're not hyping yourself into anxiety. The teachers cast a few glances at them and the couple of other resettled students, but everyone's a first-year, after all. Everyone's from somewhere.

Everyone's going somewhere, too, once they're moving to electives. "I'm on the construction track," Futakuchi says.

"Civil engineering," Aone says, standing and shouldering his bag.

"Well, yeah, that's what they call it. But y'know. Let's go find our next class."

It's probably the most predictable thing for two boys displaced by a natural disaster to pick, but here they are, meandering down the hallways of a campus far more sprawling than their last.

"Some of these electives probably take up a lot of space," Futakuchi muses. "There's a lot of them. Too many buildings."

Aone keeps pace, silent at his side. He doesn't get twitchy even when Futakuchi starts to, several left-turns later, crossing the same sheltered path between two buildings twice.

"You, there," a maintenance person in high-vis and heavy boots calls out. "You two kids lost? New?"

"We're from here," Futakuchi bites out, a little too defensive. "We know where we're going."

The man shrugs, turning back to his work. Aone tugs at the sleeve of his blazer. He's fished out a creased map from inside an equally battered leather-bound notebook, and hands it over.

2. on structural integrity

There's another earthquake, not long after the school year starts. A prefecture-wide tsunami evac warning which sets them all on edge. Which makes it particularly cruel, Futakuchi thinks, that they're not just required to return to school but to their elective's core theory class the day after, when the power grid's been stabilized.

He hates this teacher with a passion. Aone seems to be a little more ambivalent: he's not bad, just boring, or something like that, from the quirk of his brow and the half-helpless shrug he offers every time Futakuchi's about to vibrate out of his skin.

Except Onodera-sensei's not malevolent, just profoundly thoughtless, and that's even worse. "Futakuchi, Aone," he calls. "You two moved inland recently, right? You'd have seen some of this in practice, the way flat-roofed buildings take wave load differently."

Aone stills. As always, he says nothing. Onodera-sensei looks expectantly at Futakuchi, blessedly oblivious to his blinding rage.

"No," Futakuchi says slowly. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, I thought—"

"You thought wrong."

In any other situation, he'd be in trouble for talking back. It's not exactly something he's unfamiliar with, though he'd hoped to avoid it this soon. But half the class is shifting in their seats, three dozen students with stories of their own about something not so far away, and their teacher seems to be slowly catching on.

One of the other boys who'd filled out the volleyball club form, with deep-set eyes and unruly curls, puts his hand up. "What about if they were struck by lightning?", he asks, apropos of nothing, and the resulting bewildered conversation endears Futakuchi to him immediately.

Still. It's difficult to be seen, even this much. Aone trails behind him as placid as ever as they head back to their homeroom for lunch, but he drags his desk a little closer to the back corner when they get there. Futakuchi pulls his chair up, unwraps his bento, and waits.

He thinks about that deep, abiding love for the sea that only comes from living nearly on it. The way they're already talking about sea walls, a dozen metres tall, to give people enough time to flee if it betrays them again. To cut them off from it entirely, otherwise. The smell of it. The joy of it, catching the refracted light from the corner of your eye through a window. The yearning feels like an open wound.

"I miss my house," Aone says suddenly, almost too quiet to hear. "My family home."

Futakuchi thinks about the futon in the hastily cleared room at his aunt's house, and the window that looks out onto nothing blue at all. "Me too."

3. on volleyball

Coach Oiwake is straightforward in a way that's an absolute relief after the rest of the bullshit that keeps intermittently spewing from every adult's mouth.

"You don't talk," he says to Aone, watching them play their first three-on-three.

"I can," Aone says.

"But you don't." His gaze is sharp but not judgemental. "It's easier, or whatever it is, you prefer not to. And you—" he turns to Futakuchi, who's spent the entire match baiting the blonde second-year into playing poorly. "You talk too much."

"I do," Futakuchi says cheerfully. Nudges Aone with his elbow. "We're a matched set."

Volleyball, at least, is a new constant. Keeping his mind ticking over with strategies and rulebooks helps. The thrill of his body doing exactly what he wants it to is a secret, small pleasure, one thing he can control in a world he really can't.

It's ironic, in a way, to have ended up on a team so devoted to walls that successfully keep things out. Some nights Futakuchi dreams, and he dreams of heavy iron gates, the ones by the cemetery he's pretty sure was destroyed, guarding the entrance to their school. The tide soars, a friend turned foe. Aone locks the gate behind them, and they press the full weight of their outstretched fingers against it and wait to save their school or die trying.

Other nights, he doesn't dream at all. Shuts his eyes and falls asleep with the finality of a ball hitting the ground.

"I'm glad you convinced me to join," he tells Aone, wiping his face with the hem of his shirt. "This is fun."

"I didn't," Aone says. He glances meaningfully at the unassuming second-year who'd showed up at their classroom door and made a beeline for the two of them, where he's currently trying to break the other two second-year starters away from each other.

"Don't be silly," Futakuchi says, with all the affectionate condescension of a fond grandmother. "Of course you did."

4. on the way home

There's this one conbini halfway up a hill on the way home, maybe five minutes before the fork where they part ways. It's not the FamilyMart backing onto the beach that Futakuchi never thought he'd miss, but it's enough, pragmatically. Somewhere to buy something frozen as the weather warms.

"I haven't seen you boys around before this year," the plump middle-aged woman at the counter says. "First-years? What are you studying?"

Futakuchi puts his bottle of oolong tea on the counter; Aone follows with their ice pops. "Accounting," he says, on a whim.

The proprietor laughs, pushing her glasses up her nose to study them. "Nobody goes to a technical school to study that," she says. "Not from out of town."

Futakuchi straightens. Something about the last few months has knocked something loose in his chest. "Not before now," he says. Lets a little of his actual exhaustion carry into his voice. "We're from Iwate, on the coast."

"Oh." The look on her face is almost too sad to bear, but it's his fault it's there. "I'm sorry." She smiles at them, the watery warmth of seeing them as fifteen-as-in-children and not the towering young men she saw just a moment ago. Pushes their change back across the counter. "These ones are on me, just today."

Making their way up the road, Aone looks at him. Just looks, melon ice pop running in rivulets down to his wrist.

"I know," Futakuchi says. "I know."

5. on appearance

Aone attracts as much attention here as he did before, it turns out; he's also just as intimidating as he was before, if not more, for being a newcomer and being consistently saddled with Futakuchi like a particularly loud and proud limpet.

So it takes about six months before someone actually comes up and asks why Aone's hair is the way it is.

Futakuchi doesn't actually know the answer to this. It's not like it's the kind of thing that matters to him, if he's not trying to get under someone's skin.

What he does know is this: Aone does have eyebrows, and eyelashes, and body hair, just it's fine and short and pale enough that it can't really be seen from a distance. Even up close, the way they're bent over a desk more often than not at lunch, or the way Futakuchi's talked Aone into lying face-to-face in the grass when the weather's not intolerable on the way home, they're hard to see except when the light catches them. As for the hair on his head: it's soft but brittle, almost like the frizzy platinum-blonde on his little cousin's American dolls, and doesn't seem to really get any longer before it falls out. Futakuchi's only touched it in passing, an joking headpat or ruffle. He wonders how it'd feel touched in earnest.

Aone shrugs. The questioner turns to Futakuchi instead, as they often do.

"Genetic modification," Futakuchi says. Aone doesn't even react.

The girl steps back a little. "That's not possible," she says.

Futakuchi makes a helpless gesture. "How else do you end up with a Japanese teenager with white hair? Didn't you ever think it was weird that we just kind of appeared here at the start of the year and don't talk much to anyone else?" Then, for added confusion, "Isn't it suspicious that until this year we were one of the few volleyball teams in the prefecture which didn't have someone with really weird hair?"

Their classmate frowns. "You talk to lots of people," she says, but the gears are clearly turning in her head. She eyes them both with a newfound... respect, or suspicion, or something. It doesn't matter.

"Nothing I say is that important, and that's on purpose," Futakuchi says, more truthful than usual.

6. on starting trouble

The baseball team is full of assholes. It's weird. At a school like this, there's not much room for putting on airs, and they somehow manage it. Maybe they've touched too much grass.

Anyway, Futakuchi finds himself in a stalemate toward the end of his first year. Things are pretty good, for once: his family's found a more permanent place to stay, even if it's a little small. He's nearly done having to deal with Onodera-sensei. He's let his fringe get a little longer, and he's enjoying having it at that perfect point where with his head down teachers can't tell where he's looking.

Apparently this doesn't go down well with a few of the baseball club's first years. Though he might have pissed off one or two of them, of course. He doesn't remember, but they probably deserved it.

"Is that your big boyfriend, girl-face," one of them jeers.

"Yeah. You growing your hair out for him?"

Well. They definitely deserved it for being that bad at insults.

"Yes," Futakuchi says, and grabs Aone's hand, flashing his sunniest smile. "Thank you for asking."

They walk hand-in-hand all the way to the gym, where Moniwa does a double-take.

"The baseball team was harassing us," Futakuchi says. Moniwa's frown deepens.

"Why?" Onagawa asks. Onagawa, whose hair is a fair bit longer than Futakuchi's, now that he thinks about it.

"Because we're dating," he says. Raises their linked hands. For a moment he wonders if he's gone too far this time, but Aone nods, lips quirking up a little with amusement. Moniwa, though, may as well have lines scored into his face at this point. I know what you're doing and this isn't a good idea, that look says, but Futakuchi's only expected to be able to read Aone, so he ignores it.

"Whoa," Obara says. "That's... cool? Not the baseball team, I mean. Congrats."

"Yeah," Kamasaki chimes in, rolling up his sleeves. He's got his most vicious grin on; Futakuchi faintly recalls him mentioning some kind of beef with the baseball team's captain. "Let your senpai know if anyone messes with you, yeah?"

"Thank you for your support," Aone says, quiet and sincere. In the ensuing clamour of reassurance, Futakuchi suddenly realizes how terribly and permanently this could all have gone.

7. on taking and taking and taking

The thing is that Aone just lets him. Lets him make them both late for class, tolerates awkward questions from shopkeepers and peers, lets him, lets him.

Anyone else would have gotten sick of him by now, before he'd decided declaring they were both gay was an appropriate thing to do to rile someone up.

But Aone isn't anyone else. Perhaps, doesn't know how to be anyone else. Maybe he thinks he owes Futakuchi a debt for attaching himself to him and not letting go. Maybe he thinks he'd be alone.

The thought of it makes Futakuchi feel a little sick.

They'd had a practice match that day, their first as second-years. It turned out things had gotten a bit out of control: gossip had spread over the break, though he has no idea why anyone cares about them. The other team's number-six had called him something he doesn't particularly care to repeat as they shook hands.

Futakuchi doesn't think he's ever seen Aone that angry. He'd stormed over, face twisted in rage; wound up to take a swing at the other boy; only dropped his hand and his stance, still visibly seething, when Futakuchi darted between them and put a hand to his chest.

"That's my boyfriend," Aone had said, eyes hard as flint, before the adults had finally stepped in.

What the hell, basically. Futakuchi tosses and turns that night, before giving up on feigning sleep and sitting upright in bed, kicking away the covers puddling around his waist.

Aone knows what he’s like. He’s seen him blatantly lie dozens of times. He must have known, that first time Futakuchi had taken his hand, that this was another stunt. Surely.

He tries not to think about the way the pink that had rushed to his face was real, then, and now. Aone's face keeps rising to his mind: how furious he was. How instinctive that fury was. How it felt, palm flat to his chest, to nearly touch his hammering heart and know this is for me, this is because of me.

Thinks about sirens and warnings to retreat. Thinks about the way Aone's lips are a spot of color and softness on his severe face. Thinks about facing the ocean head-on.

8. on being found

Aone’s waiting for him in their usual meeting place, the next day. He nods at Futakuchi then starts walking, as he always does.

“Hold on,” Futakuchi says. “Hold on, wait, I wanted to—” He grabs at Aone’s wrist, fingers slipping along the sensitive skin just under his palm.

Aone stops and laces their fingers together. Waits, patient as ever. Futakuchi's blood drains from his brain like the yawning emptiness of the sea retreating, those few hours before it rushed back in.

“This,” Futakuchi says, raising their linked hands. “Did you think—” He stops for a moment to try and sort his thoughts out, though he doesn’t get very far. “I think I like you,” he says, instead.

“I know,” Aone says.

“No, I mean. You knew I was messing with everyone, right, when I said we were dating?”

Aone nods. Of course, his eyes say.

“Then…”

“The things you say. They come from somewhere.”

Oh. “Am I that obvious?”

“Only to me.” A tilt of his head. “And maybe Moniwa.” He smiles at Futakuchi, the tiny, secret one that crinkles the corners of his eyes more than anything else. Futakuchi can't pretend he doesn't understand what it means.

He feels the weight of Aone’s trust in his throat. “I’m a liar,” he says.

“I know,” Aone says.

“I don’t even think it’s a bad thing.”

“I know.”

“I’d probably be a pretty terrible boyfriend.”

Aone squeezes his hand. “Not to me. Not if it’s us.”

That brings the heat flooding to Futakuchi’s face. They’re standing in the middle of the road, two teenage boys of unusual height and temperament connected by hands and tragedy. He remembers the things he’d thought about last night.

“I wanna be honest about something,” he says, but before he can get the words out, Aone’s dropped his hand. Steps forward, cupping his face instead, and kisses him, quick and sweet and chaste.

“You were looking at my mouth,” Aone says.

“Oh.” Futakuchi stands dumbly for a moment, flushed right up to his ears, before he decides he’s more thrilled than mortified about being so thoroughly known.

“Do that again,” he demands, and Aone does.